


Damsel

by Aramley



Category: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 09:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: In which there's a girl, a dragon, and a castle, and Arthur resolves not to let the truth get in the way of a good story.





	Damsel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenfoxes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/gifts).



> Happy yuletide, Sevenfoxes! I hope you enjoy!

"Look, I don't know what you lot are complaining about," Arthur says, spreading his hands peaceably. He looks around at the semicircle of quietly furious knights arrayed around him in the Round Table chamber. "I left you a note."

 

"Yes, the note," Bedivere says, producing the same from his belt. "The note which says, and I quote – "

 

 _Gone to see a bloke about a bird_ , Arthur writes, and gets a little kick out of imagining what Bedivere's face is going to look like when he reads it.

 

Bedivere's looks like someone’s taken a shit on his breakfast. Arthur smothers a smile.

  
"Alright," he says. "Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

 

“How silly of us to overreact,” Bill chips in, because even though Arthur is king now he just can’t help himself. “The recently-crowned king disappears from Camelot in the dead of night, with no warning and leaving no clue as to his whereabouts. He returns ten days later, accompanied by the Mage, riding a dragon.”

 

Arthur shrugs. “Looked good, though, didn’t it?”

 

“Ate half a cavalry unit, before the Mage talked it off,” says George. “Luckily it was the horse half.”

 

“Well, it was a long flight,” says Arthur. “Look, let’s not get bogged down in the detail. I can explain everything.”

 

"Start with the bit about the dragon," says Blue from the corner where he has been placed under strict instruction not to interrupt.

 

Arthur sighs. "The bit about the -

 

 _“ - dragon!_ " Arthur shouts. "An actual, a real, a great big bloody, after everything, and you –“

 

“Calm down,” says the Mage, not even looking at him. “It is a small dragon. It barely touched you.”

 

“I was  _on fire_ ,” Arthur says.

 

 

“No, tell it from the beginning,” Bill interrupts. “I’m sure we’d all like to truly understand what happened to lead the king to act in such a, ah.”

 

“Like a dickhead,” Wetstick supplies, and Arthur throws him a dangerous look. Honestly, the level of disrespect.

 

“Alright,” Arthur says, leaning back in his chair. “From the beginning, then. It started with the bard.”

  

It starts with a bard. Arthur hates bards, but apparently a big part of being a king is sitting around in the Great Hall of an evening listening to an endless series of skinny blokes pluck at their lutes.

 

“That was great,” Arthur lies, once this particular evening’s bard has finished, and claps loosely in a way that he hopes conveys enough approval not to cause offence, but not enough to tempt an encore.  “I liked that one at the end, with the magic lady trapped in the castle.”

 

The bard bows so low he nearly brains himself on his own lute. “Thy praise is meed beyond my due, my king. ‘Tis a tale most wond’rous; I myself glimpsed the mage-lady held in the high fastness of Melwas’ keep on my own wandering journey– ”

 

 

“I had that tune stuck in my head for a week,” Wetstick says.

 

“I remember you showed an uncommon interest in the song,” Bedivere says to Arthur, as though he hadn’t heard Wetstick speak, and to be fair, Arthur himself still sometimes finds this to be the best approach. “Did you think it was the Mage?”

 

 Arthur leans forward, elbows on knees. It’s just a feeling, but still. “What did she look like, this mage lady?”

 

“Full fair was she,” says the bard. “Yet a face most wan. Like a high banner were her azure sleeves that snapped in the clear air; her white hand – “

 

“Alright, mate, you’re off the clock,” Arthur says. “What did she look like?”

 

“Brown hair, blue dress,” says the bard, sullenly. “Didn’t see much from that distance but I’d say she was sharp-featured. Foxy-like.”

 

“Just a feeling,” Arthur says. “We’d not seen her since she left, or heard of her.”

  
“Who’s Melwas?” Blue interrupts again.

 

“And who the fuck is this Melwas character?” Arthur asks.

 

“Melwas is a king of the old order,” Bill says. “Before the kingdom was united under Uther.”

 

  “Uther accepted the clientage of such men as a concession to the Britons of the west and north, and under his rule their loyalty was assured,” Bedivere elaborates. “Under Vortigern they were neglected, so long as they did not interfere in the building of the Tower. There is magic in their lineage. They are dangerous men.”

 

“Oh good,” says Arthur. “I’m glad I’m hearing about them now, six months into being, you know, _their king_.”

 

“If I had known you intended to ride out _alone and unaccompanied_ against a _magic lord_ I might have put the point more strongly,” says Bedivere, reaching for more wine.

 

“Did you all miss the bit where I kicked Vortigern’s arse all around his silly Tower with my big, magic sword?” Arthur huffs.

 

“Our apologies,” Bill says, making a very slight obeisance. “Of course neither Bedivere nor I would wish to imply that you leapt in to a situation with no consideration for your own safety or the security and stability of the kingdom and no idea what you were letting yourself in for. My king.”

 

“Good,” says Arthur. “So, as you say, I carefully and with all due consideration decided to make the journey to Melwas’ castle and retrieve an invaluable ally of the kingdom.”

 

Bill regards him speculatively. "And nobody saw you leave the castle?"

 

"I'm afraid nobody's to pass this gateway," says the sentry, chest thrust forewards, breastplate shining in the moonlight. "I have orders from the king hisself that no one is to pass this gateway."

 

Arthur lets his hood fall back slightly so that the light touches his face.

 

"Oh bloody hell," says the sentry.

"No one saw me leave the castle," Arthur says.

 

"And how did you manage that?"

 

"By stealth and cunning," says Arthur.

 

 

"Fifty pennies and you never saw me," Arthur says.

 

"Quiet night, innit," says the sentry, and the purse sails with a merry jangle through the air.

 

"This bit's boring," Blue pipes up. "When's the dragon coming into it?"

 

"Someone give that boy a clip on the ear," Arthur says, and judging by Blue's indignant yelp someone – probably Wetstick – obliges. "Where was I?"

 

"Your stealth and cunning," Percival offers, and if he weren't so damned well-bred Arthur would swear there’s an edge of sarcasm there.

 

"Exactly," says Arthur, who had spent ten days ride distributing coin by the handful to every hedgerow peasant with an improbably good grasp of current affairs from Camelot to the Summer Lands, but was hardly about to disclose it. “So, in summary, I gave you lot the slip and headed off to Melwas’ castle. Nice little trip.”

 

By the fourth day of rain and up to his arse in mud, Arthur decides that the countryside is a doghole.

 

“Really brought me in touch with the land.” Arthur nods importantly. “Dirt under the fingernails and all that.”

 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Arthur says to his horse, who gives him a snort of utter contempt. “I’ll leave you at the next hamlet. I’ll swap you for a donkey and you can spend the rest of your life pulling a plough.”

 

He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised when the horse throws him into the next available ditch.

 

“Felt like I really got in touch with the people of the kingdom. Salt of the earth types.”

 

“King or no king, I’ll teach you to steal from my orchard,” the old woman shouts, and gives Arthur another rap on the seat with the blunt end of her rake.

 

“I was going to pay!” Arthur shouts, and runs, dropping apples as he goes. “I was – oi! This is treason!”

 

“Treason my arse!” the old woman shouts.

 

“We’re all very happy for you,” says Bedivere. “But – the castle? The Mage?”

 

“Patience is a virtue, Bedivere, ” says Arthur. “Eventually, after a long journey and a series of heartwarming encounters with my loyal subjects, I reached the Summer Lands.”

 

Arthur knows instantly when he reaches the Summer Lands. It’s like crossing an invisible border: a subtle change of air; a thick, midsummer silence; a slow, honey-coloured light. Arthur’s skin prickles under his leathers with an unseasonal heat. Ahead, on the crest of a low dun-coloured hill, Melwas’ castle shimmers.

 

“What was the plan, boss?” says George.

  

At this point, alone and confronted with the squat, solidly mass of Melwas’ curtain walls, Arthur realises he doesn’t have a plan.

 

“Fuck,” he says.

 

“Get in, kick some arses, rescue the girl, obviously,” Arthur says. “I rode right up to the front door.”

 

“What did they do?”

 

“Nothing,” says Arthur. “It was open.”

 

Arthur passes through the unguarded gatehouse and the outer court, feeling increasingly uneasy. The silence is thick and oppressive, and he grips Excalibur’s hilt. Through the barbican and into the inner court, and still no sign of life save barrels upended, a cart unhitched and abandoned, soldier’s gear strewn haphazardly on the ground. Arthur starts to get a serious case of the creeps.

 

“Mage?” he shouts, wishing not for the first time that he knew her proper name. “Mage? Oi!”

 

“Nobody anywhere,” Arthur says. “Quiet as a graveyard. Kept going through the inner court and still nothing. And then I heard this noise.”

 

 “What noise?” Percival asks.

 

“A bit like a bird,” Arthur says. “If the bird’s wings are made of leather and are twenty foot across.”

 

Blue punches the air. “Finally!”

 

The dragon circles lazily up in the air above the courtyard and Arthur just stares dumbly up for a second at its gleaming scarlet belly before it banks with frightening speed and comes to rest deftly on a section of curtain wall. Arthur notes the way its talons crack the immense stonework.

 

This may have been a mistake.

 

“So this thing just looks at me for a second,” Arthur says, enjoying himself now that he has everyone’s attention riveted on him. “Great evil-looking thing, claws like war-scythes, smoke curling out of the big bastard’s nostrils, and he’s looking at me with these huge evil black eyes and I can see him thinking,  _barbecue_.”

 

Arthur raises Excalibur, though who knows what use it’s going to be against a dragon. Still. It’s what he’s got.

 

The dragon hisses. Power chases itself like lightning along Excalibur’s blade.

 

“Come on then,” Arthur shouts. “Come and have a go!”

 

The dragon draws in on itself like a cat about to pounce, parts its massive jaws, and Arthur throws himself sideways just in time to miss the gout of flame that licks clear across the courtyard.

 

“And then what happened?” says Blue, breathlessly.

 

“Then I got turned into charcoal,” says Arthur. “What do you think happened, numpty?”

 

“ _Paid!”_  The voice rings out, clear and true, across the courtyard.

 

The dragon stops.

 

Arthur knows that voice.

 

“The dragon was shit-scared of Excalibur,” Arthur says. “Obviously.”

 

“And the Mage?” says Bedivere.

 

Arthur risks a look up. The dragon is still perched on the wall, forked tail curled around his front talons, looking less like a murderous brute and instead like nothing so much as a rebuked dog.

 

“What are you doing here?” the voice says again, and Arthur tracks it to a window high in the keep and sees her. The Mage.

 

“I’ve come to rescue you,” Arthur says.

 

“Don’t be absurd,” says the Mage.

 

Arthur clears his throat. “I found the Mage trapped in Melwas’ keep by the dragon, and she was incredibly grateful.”

 

“What do you mean, ‘don’t be absurd’?” Arthur shouts back. “I’m here to rescue you!”

 

Even at the considerable distance from tower window to ground, Arthur can see the Mage’s frown. “Do I look as though I am in need of rescue?”

 

“Honestly?” Arthur gestures around at the keep, the tower, the dragon. “Doesn’t look great for you.”

 

“Come up here,” says the Mage, and abruptly disappears from the window.

 

“The fucking ingratitude,” Arthur says.

 

“The story was true? She had been trapped by Melwas?” says Bedivere. “I would not have thought it possible. Melwas was powerful, but I did not think he could overpower a Mage of true blood.”

 

“What can I say,” says Arthur. “Happens to the best of us.”

 

“Is this a library?” Arthur says. He stands stunned in the doorway, looking around the chamber with its book-stacked shelves, its strange gleaming instruments set on low tables, its walls hung with rich tapestries depicting diverse exotica.

 

“Clearly,” says the Mage, from her seat at a desk stacked high with volumes and scrolls. “What are you doing here?”

 

“I’m here to rescue you,” Arthur says. “What the fuck are  _< i>you</i> _doing here?”

 

“Reading,” says the Mage, with thundering obviousness. “What do you mean you’re here to rescue me?”

 

“Did she tell you how the whole thing had come to pass?” says Bill.

 

“Well,” says Arthur. “I explained to her that I’d heard how she was being held captive by Melwas.”

 

“I was,” says the Mage.

  

“What do you mean  _was_?”

 

“And then she told me all about how Melwas had taken her hostage while she travelled north back to Merlin and the Mages and how he overpowered her and locked her up in the keep.”

 

“Melwas tried to take me prisoner as I travelled back to my people after leaving Camelot,” says the Mage. She shifts some books on the desk, checking their gilded spines as if the conversation is boring her. “He is in the dungeons now. With the rest of his household.”

 

“And you’re still here because -?”

 

“Melwas has one of the great magical libraries of the kingdom,” says the Mage. “Actually this whole experience has been very fortunate.”

 

“And Melwas himself?” says Bill. “Where were he and his household in all of this?”

 

“They’d bravely legged it at the first sign of trouble,” Arthur lies, though the likelihood is that Melwas will hardly put it about that his entire household’s arse had been handed to it by one slip of a Mage. “The dragon turned out to be a bit more of a handful than he’d bargained for.”

 

“I can relate,” says Bill, quietly, which Arthur charitably allows to pass.

 

“It had been a terrible ordeal for the poor girl,” says Arthur, also ignoring the increasingly sceptical looks that Bedivere is beginning to level at him. “Weeks she’d been there, trapped up there in the keep, guarded night and day by a great big dragon.”

 

 _“- a dragon!_ " Arthur shouts. "An actual, a real, a great big bloody, after everything, and you sitting here -“

 

“Calm down,” says the Mage, not even looking at him. “It is a small dragon. It barely touched you.”

 

“I was  _on fire_ ,” Arthur says, indicating his singed sleeve

 

“Nobody asked you to come,” says the Mage, looking up. “I certainly did not.”

 

“Honestly, the poor girl was falling over herself to thank me,” says Arthur. “Really. I think she was very touched. Asked me why I’d done it.”

 

“Why did you come here?” Now that the Mage is looking at him, Arthur wishes that she’d stop. Her gaze is clear, direct, and piercing. “Be honest.”

 

“I owed you one,” Arthur says.

 

“Nonsense,” says the Mage. “How can I trust you unless you are honest?”

 

“And what did you say?” says Wetstick, who looks sly.

 

Arthur briefly considers going back downstairs and contending with the dragon. It seems preferable to withstanding the Mage’s clear, confrontational gaze.

 

“Because I care about you, alright?” Arthur shouts. “Because I bloody missed you. Because you’re infuriating and when I thought you were in danger I hated it. Because I want you to come back to Camelot. Is that enough or shall I spill the rest of my guts out over the floor?”

 

“None of your business what I said,” says Arthur.

 

Arthur’s cheeks are burning and still the Mage is looking at him, her expression set.

 

“One more hour,” she says at last.

 

“Pardon?”

 

“Give me one more hour to study this text and we can go back to Camelot.” She looks back down at her book.

 

Arthur stares at her. “You’re coming back?”

 

“That is what I said,” says the Mage. “You look hungry. Go to the kitchen and find something to eat. I will come and find you when I am finished.”

 

“Hurry up, then,” Arthur says, more to wrest back some semblance of control over this situation than out of any real desire to hurry; he’s lived on apples the last week and his stomach rumbles at the thought of real food.

 

“Arthur,” says the Mage, and Arthur turns back in the doorway. The Mage looks up. He looks at her pale, serious face and dark eyes. “Thank you,” she says.

 

“Any time,” Arthur says, and means it.

 

“And then you  _flew back_  on the  _dragon_?” Blue asks, and for once it’s a welcome distraction.

 

“I am not flying back on the dragon,” Arthur says.

 

“Don’t be frightened,” says the Mage. “He will not hurt you as long as I am here.”

 

“That’s a great comfort,” Arthur mutters, while the Mage speaks to the dragon in some strange tongue.  _Fyddwch chi gario ni?_  she says, and to Arthur’s great shock the dragon rumbles back something in the same speech,  _Gwnaf i, Gwenhwyfar_ , in a voice like a poker scraping through hot coals.

 

“What was that he said?” Arthur asks.

 

“That he will not eat you unless you do something to deserve it,” says the Mage. “Climb up between the fourth and fifth ridges on his back and hold on very tightly.”

 

“And then I flew back on the dragon,” says Arthur. He winks at Blue. “Piece of piss, really. No finer way to travel.”

 

“Open your eyes,” the Mage shouts, barely audible over the rushing air and the sound of the dragon’s great leathery wings. “No man in a thousand years has seen the world from dragonback.”

 

“I can think of some good reasons why not,” Arthur shouts back into the space between the Mage’s shoulderblades, where he has kept his face for the entire journey.

 

“And that’s the story of how I rescued a girl from a magic castle and a dragon,” says Arthur. He leans back in his seat and grins. “I think we should get that bard back in here, Bedivere. They’ll be humming this one til Michaelmas.”

**Author's Note:**

> One of my favourite things about this odd film was Guy Ritchie's trademark jump-cutting narrative-inside-narrative. I hope I've captured some of the style with this fic!
> 
> The bits of dialogue between the dragon and the Mage are in Welsh, just to throw a little extra into the ahistorical fantasy soup of this world!  
>  _Paid!_ Stop!  
>  _Fyddwch chi gario ni?_ Will you carry us?  
>  _Gwnaf i, Gwenhwyfar_ I will, Gwenhwyfar  
>  Gwenhwyfar is also Welsh - for Guinevere ;)


End file.
